pbr basically summed up my suspicions. cops can do whatever they want. i dont understand why they can just "protect and serve" instead of harassing and invading peoples privacys, causing troubles and ruining peoples lives, just to fill their quotas. i never want to become a cop, they must have no souls.

They are human, and as humans will act according to the incentive system in which they function. It is as simple as they collect a paycheck in return for writing citations and arresting citizens. There is no solution to be found by appealing to ideals or principles, ie. "the police should protect and serve." Maybe they should, but reality is they won't because that is not the incentive. There may be a few principled LEOs, but they are the minority. Even many who think they are principled (as with all of us) really act according to incentives. The vast majority of people do not behave according to principles, rather their behavior is conditioned according to incentives. Therefore, on average, that is how groups of people will behave.

The only hope is to change the incentives from getting paid to arrest (an incentive structure which is more profitable when there is more crime, to getting paid to minimize arrests and crime. Privatization of security services and voluntary government (or DROs) is the only hope. Unfortunately, only a tiny minority have ever even heard of the libertarian free market concepts that could provide solutions, and the government schools statist indocrination camps do everything in their power to ensure that a child's mind never hears of any ideas that may hint at the possibility that we could solve our own problems with private institutions.

I suppose that an interim improvement may also be possible, without so far reaching a transformation as to voluntary government, by incrementally changing the legal structure so as to increase the degree to which the state must prove not just violation of the law, but criminal intent to violate the law, in such cases as frequently plague gun owners who are threatened with draconian punishments for innocuous errors in following the law.

Either improvement however seems unlikely, as it appears we are sliding inexorably toward totalitarianism, regardless of the protestations of both sides of the one party system. The left, in addition to being entirely incapable of comprehending markets, can't grasp that their every proposal to help simply increases the state's power. The right can't grasp that you simply can't retain "freedom" while at the same time expanding a global empire (increasing state power). Both sides are hopelessly easy to dupe into believing that "threats" are lurking around every corner. It is not incorrect that there are threats. But the fact is that almost the entirety of the "threats" are self-created. This will remain the case as it is in the state's interest to see it continue. We have no intention of defeating our "enemies," because the state largely created them. While they may be a threat to the safety of the people, they are for that very reason the health of the state. Again, people function only according to incentives.